Ray Cassick wrote:

The newer versions DO Offer an Out of the browser experience.

Interesting. What started with AJAX and developed into SL, may now end up coming full circle back to a desktop app. Now we will need tools to write more plumbing code for us, so when we open VS, and create a new desktop app, a blank form comes up that we drag controls to, double-click on them, and start writing code. I know, I know! Overly simplistic perhaps, but you get my point. For example, something that would help us do asynch and parallel programming without needing a brain 3x the size. Anyone want a used brain? I'm looking to upgrade.

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Thanks, MatrixDud, I know there must be some benefit in ASP.NET and AJAX. I have glanced at these in the past, but never got up the gumption to wade in. But others are suggesing that Silverlight 4 is the way to go, and I see some pretty nice visuals with that. Regarding pre-made custom controls from vendors - I'm trying to avoid using 3rd party controls, as nice as they are. This is to avoid bugs or version changes in someone else's code causing my customer to get mad at me. So I'm now thinking about RIA, MVVM, and Silverlight 4. Bill Burrows has some pretty impressive tutorials at myVBProf.com. Have you had a look at those yet? I didn't want to become a xaml programmer, which VS2008 seemed to try to make us, but I think I could force myself to do a bit of that. VS2010 seems to provide more UI tools to write the xaml for us.

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Thanks JongchanAhn, I haven't seen any answer yet that seems irrelevant to me, though. And what you say - "We haven't been there yet" is partially true, since we don't have anything yet that works like - say - a phone, where you pick it up and get a dialtone. But what I needed here is exactly what I'm getting - ideas for working toward the goal now instead of waiting for the day when things are as easy as a phone. What do you think - does that sound reasonable?

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Thanks, Max, Yeah, I can see that some of the friends suggesting an approach such as is provided with visualwebgui would take some of the pain out of the events versus page lifecycle paradigm. Either way, it's a total change of thinking, which all comes from the issue of sending bytes along a wire asynchrounously instead of counting on resources (code) being instantly available to "answer" some event. Actually, I think the whole asynch paradigm is what we will all need to do within the next few years. It might be good practice to use delegates for everything within some sub-project just to get used to it. In fact, (philosophising here) I believe asynch thinking is probably more real-world than what we do now, which is like tugging a string and expecting the other end to move. It's like you have a message, so you put it in a bottle, throw it in the ocean, and then you need 100 people to watch the beach for "if and when" an answer comes back in a bottle. The real world works like that - when you order some product by phone or on a website, it's only when the product arrives at your door that you know you have it. Some truck 1,000 miles away brought it, but you weren't pulling the truck along a wire to make it arrive. Things are inherently disconnected in the real world. The days of quickbasic are gone ha ha ha.

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Cool! Your suggestions are definitely part of the solution to this problem. Isolating the UI from the rest of the logic, still within the desktop app, will make it a lot easier to move everything to a web app. The hurdles I encounter during this process will probably force me to think it through with the web app in mind. (E.g. passing certain parameters along with the call, etc.) Thanks for taking the time to make these suggestions.

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Thanks, Phil! I will definitely look into that.

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Thanks Gerard! Yes, good suggestion to consider the code gen tools. Your point about the business logic being smaller than all the plumbing code is very true. If my attempts at following OO practices have been successful, it may be that I can pull the business logic out and replace the plumbing code with a tool. I'll consider that suggestion. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience with the community! Bob

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Thanks kofflerd, I am beginning to think you are right.

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Thanks, Tim! I do find your comments very useful, and I appreciate you taking the time to document your experiences with SL versus a desktop app. Others have mentioned SL as a way to go, and I am beginning to think that might be a big part of the answer. I love your suggestion about using several smaller SL apps to get various bits of info for a page rather than one big fetch. From what I've seen on myVBProf.com, Bill Burrows demonstrates that VS2010 is much improved for xaml stuff.

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Thanks again, d@nish, I have considered a webservice in the past, but to create a responsive interactive experience such as is possible with two-way remoting, would be difficult with a webservice, since the client would be "pinging" the webservice way too often. Or maybe others have achieved that... It certainly would simplify things though. Thanks for the clarifications on SOA and workflow foundation. I'll look into that.

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Thanks,nazmolla. Your suggestion is very useful, since it shows a way to work with the existing desktop application rather than rewriting it for the web. This is not the direction I wanted to explore in the original question, but of course, sometimes we need to look at the bigger picture to evaluate what is the best direction.

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You are way cool :)

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Eddy Vluggen wrote:

Maybe I'm just being religious on the subject

No, I think your thoughts are very relevant and well-thought-out. Folks like me that have to be both the developer and marketer though, have to be sensitive to both concerns. "Way cool" means different things to different people. I don't mean window dressing, but well-thought-out intuitive placement, coloring, and response of UI elements, that help the user do the job as easily as possible. For example, one of the things I have in most windows is built-in help in a collapsible panel. To me, not wow but ease of use is "way cool". However, I did get the head of one IT dept the other day say "wow" when she saw one of my screens. That made me feel pretty good... :) I'm sure you don't mean that anything that looks good is a waste of system resources. I conclude that you must be referring to color schemes that look cool to the teeny-boppers, being dark grey with orange text and animations and so on that would tend to use processor time for little other than amusement to the developer. Hey, this IS starting to sound like a soapbox rant, isn't it!! I'll shut up now. :)

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Thanks again, ely_bob! I have quite a few tabbed-dialogs and wizards. What do you think of the idea of a webpage that aligns those vertically so the user work their way from the top down? There's a notepad replacement app that does that, and it looks really cool. (Of course, that app is a desktop app ha ha ha) Regarding the separate solution for the UI, do you mean separate project or separate solution completely? Either way, I guess the code in the form would look something like (air-coding here):

Public Class WizForm1
Private m_UI_Handler As SomeUIHandlingProject
Private Sub Done_Click (e,sender) Handles btnDone.Click
m_UI_Handler.WizForm1_Handlers.DoneClick
End Sub
End Class

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modified on Thursday, July 22, 2010 5:35 PM

Thanks very much d@nish!

d@nish wrote:

You can use use WCF but do not think of replacing remoting with that

It sounds like you have had a problem that leads you to this conclusion, am I right? My app is heavily using remoting. I was under the impression that WCF was supposed to do everything remoting does. Also, could you please expand the acronym, SOA, I'm not familiar with that. When you mention "work flow", I assume you mean using visio or similar. Again, thanks for taking the time to provide such a thorough reply.

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Thanks very much, nazmolla, Sounds interesting! I have customers who have a workstation at work, and may also want to work from home. How do you see this implementation working for them?

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Bindows! Interesting! Thanks, squeek, I will study that.

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Thanks Ralph.Popp! I went right away to the site and visualwebgui does look quite painless. The price is right too. Now this discussion was started to discuss strategies for making my app be a browser app, so please don't be annoyed if I include some philosophy here - Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll bet their product requires me installing their dlls on my customer's server. Just so you see the workings of my tiny cynical mind: Since the visualwebgui folks are on version 6.4, that means they had versions previous to that, and in all likelihood, will also have versions 6.5, 7.1, and so on. My concern is that if I don't have the source code, I become dependent on other developers outside my "team of one" when there are problems with compatibility. Then my customer is mad at me, and then I have to get mad at the visualwebgui people, and of course then the problem escalates, and I end up sneaking around at night in my black ninja outfit, getting revenge by letting the air out of their tires. Ha ha. But seriously, I really try to do it all myself if possible. That philosphy has served me well, although at the cost of my time, a lot of it, which I realize could be saved through using a more "convenient" 3rd party app. In fact the same goes for those devexpress free controls. I can't use them, cool as they are, because I have no control over the source code. Let me know your thought on this, if you see a gap in my reasoning, and thanks again for your reply.

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Wow, thanks MachineGun, for going to all that effort - excellent reply! I recently implemented an auto-update feature in my app, based on this article: Application Auto Update Revisited[^] The main app checks, downloads the update, and if that all goes well, launches another app. All the second app does is replace the main app's executable, and then launch the main app. It seems to be working. I used that because I read some negative stuff about ClickOnce, I forget where. But I wonder whether you have a comment on whether the procedure you have outlined in your message has some advantages in your opinion. Thanks again for the reply! I will analyze it! I noticed there was some command line stuff to do. I guess the VS installer project could implement that somehow. This is a commercial app, where I would prefer that the installer does everything so the IT folks don't need to do any tweaking. But that is only from a quick perusal of your post. As I say, I will take the time to read the references you included. Bob

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MatrixDud wrote:

A well developed .NET desktop app should be easily ported to ASP.NET

I'd love to get some more comments on this. With SL, WebMatrix, Ajax, and a whole confusing array of other stuff that is all "newer" than ASP.NET, I hesitate to jump into an ASP.NET project unless it is really the best way to go. For example, has MS produced good-looking controls for ASP.NET? If ASP.NET "had it all", why did the world need Silverlight? (The comment about calculation-intensive is not a concern for my app, though. It's more about interactivity between server and client. E.g. The user clicks a button on the UI and this causes the server app to control a piece of equipment interactively.)

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